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Tag Archives: Musings and rambling

I got this from a cousin this morning and liked it so much I decided to share it, guess my old fartiness is showing! (Sorry about the weird formatting, but I’m feeling too lazy to remove the >s.

Subject: Fwd: GREEN!!!!!!!!SOOOO GOOD AND SOOOO TRUE

> At the cash register of the store, the young cashier
> suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own shopping
> bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.
>
> The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this
> green thing back in my earlier days.”
>
> The cashier responded, “That’s our problem today. Your
> generation did not care enough to save our environment for future
> generations. You didn’t have the green thing.”
>
> She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing
> in its day.
>
> Back then, we returned milk bottles, soft drink bottles and
> beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to
> be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same
> bottles over and over. So they really were recycling. We refilled
> writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the
> razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just
> because the blade got dull.
>
> But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.
>
> We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in
> every shop and office building. We walked to the grocery store and
> didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two
> blocks.
>
> But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.
>
> Back then, we washed the baby’s nappies because we didn’t
> have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy
> gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really
> did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down
> clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.
>
> But that young lady is right. We didn’t have the green thing
> back in our day.
>
> Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV
> in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a
> handkerchief, not a screen the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
> In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have
> electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile
> item to send in the post, we used wrapped up old newspapers to cushion
> it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire
> up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push
> mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t
> need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on
> electricity.
>
> But she’s right. We didn’t have the green thing back then.
>
> We drank water from a tap when we were thirsty instead of
> demanding a plastic bottle flown in from another country. We accepted
> that a lot of food was seasonal and didn’t expect that to be trucked
> in or flown thousands of air miles. We actually cooked food that
> didn’t come out of a packet, tin or plastic wrap and we could even
> wash our own vegetables and chop our own salad.
>
> But we didn’t have the green thing back then.
>
> Back then, city people took the tram or a bus, and kids rode
> their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mothers into
> a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an
> entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need
> a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000
> miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.
>
> But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful
> we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back
> then?
>
> Please forward this on to another selfish old person who
> needs a lesson in conservation from a smart-ass young person.
>
> Remember:
>
> Don’t make old people mad. We don’t like being old in the
> first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off.
>